


this kill is not a rival

by vasnormandy



Series: in this maze of leaves and lovely blood [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Multi, and three of three, i'll update the tags as new elements come into play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-01 20:44:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4033960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vasnormandy/pseuds/vasnormandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in the lands beyond the wall, a nomadic group wanders far north; the men of the wall quest to discover how to fight the dead who rise again, as cold as ice; and between the free folk and the night's watch, years of resentment and whispers of war threaten to come to a head. || a dragon age au set in george r.r. martin's "a song of ice and fire," concerning the events beyond the wall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

but you were serious,  
you wore gloves and plodded,  
you saw me as vermin,  
the fate you aim at me  
is not light literature.

-          margaret atwood, _fox/fire song_

* * *

**LIRANEN**

 

* * *

 

 

The wind has freed a wispy strand of raven hair from her braids. It flits, flutters, dark and harsh against cheeks as cold and pale as ice. She has not the patience to tuck it back into place, nor to recreate the style entirely, so she pulls her short knife from her belt. Inquisitive fingers reach up, finding the offending hairs and following them back to their roots, and she slices, severing them so close to her scalp that a few flakes of skin come away on the blade.

The hairs are tossed aside into the snow, the knife returned to its sheath, and she focuses again on her task, cold eyes fixed down on the somewhat longer blade in her lap. There is a sharpening stone in her hand; with deft, practiced movements, she strikes it down the length of the blade, whittling the metal to a fine edge.

“Lira!”

Her hand stills.

He approaches her in the knowledge that few but him are permitted to do so when she is working with her blades. She lifts her eyes to him from where she sits in the snow – standing, he towers over her, though in truth they are not far apart in height. Thick furs conceal all skin below his jaw; his hair, dark and matted into thick locks, is gathered up and tied back from his narrow face. The overlarge wolf jawbone hangs, as it always has, from a cord around his neck. She has on several occasions had a hand in spreading the rumor that he wears it as a trophy, a memento of a direwolf he slaughtered single-handedly. Some others theorize that the beast was his companion, his friend – a suggestion with no true basis besides his being a warg, though admittedly that is more than her theory can claim. For his part, he insists that he came upon the animal’s skeleton by chance, already long dead, during the years he spent wandering on his own. He has worn the bone for longer than she has known him, and she honestly has no idea which tale is closest to the truth.

“Are you cold?” he questions, concern carving a hollow in his brow.

She glances down to her crossed legs, set deep in a good foot of snow, so surrounded for so long that the frost has long since soaked her furs. And she smiles. Solas was born south, past the great wall the kneelers broke the land with so long ago. He is one of them now, but he will never understand, not really – not in true.

“The winter is my mother,” she replies calmly. “Her embrace is always warm to me.” But she rises to her feet all the same, if only for his peace of mind. “What do you need?”

He seems to remember only then that he had interrupted her for a reason. “Ah. Yes.” He draws a breath. “The Watch has come north of the Wall.”

She offers response in the form of a dismissive shrug, tucking her sword away in her belt and her stone in her pouch. “The crows are always coming beyond the Wall.”

“Yes, Liranen,” he agrees, “but they have come in force. Their company has passed Craster’s keep.”

Her nose wrinkles in distaste at the name – _crow-loving, daughter-fucking mongrel_ – but she does not breach the matter. He knows her thoughts on Craster, knows her relief that their clan’s travels keep them far from his domain.

“Deshanna does not believe the matter to be of consequence,” Solas adds.

“You troubled the Keeper with this?”

“She is a reasonable woman, and a good commander.” It is to his credit, she supposes, that he does not add _‘in spite of her sex,’_ or something along those lines. “I brought my concerns to her, but she –”

“Told you the crows come beyond their bloody Wall all the time,” Liranen finishes. “So you came crawling to me.”

He flushes. “I only hoped –”

“That I’d take your side, but I won’t.” She shakes her head. “The Keeper is right, Solas. As she tends to be.” A deep breath pushes her chest forward as she looks down, pausing a moment to brush the lingering snow from her furs. “I will spare a moment’s thought for the crows when she does.”

Solas sighs. “As you will, Lira.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “As I will.”

Her hand rests on the hilt of her sword as she trudges through the snow, away from Solas and his fool worries. Admittedly, as her people go, she has been given notably little reason to regard the Night’s Watch with any significant measure of fear. Most groups who wander further south have encountered a ranger patrol at least once or twice, or know someone who has. But it is a rare day that the pampered southron boys trek far enough north to reach the taller mountains and the greater plains, the lands some more daring creature long ago dubbed the Dales. Lira was born here; she has lived among the Dalish wanderers all her life, and though they have on occasion ventured close enough to the Wall that they could have encountered men of the Watch, they never have. She has seen their black cloaks worn by free folk who bested them, seen their bodies displayed as a warning to any who might come looking for them, but she has never looked one in the eye.

There is not far to walk before she reaches the edge of their encampment – theirs is a small, temporary settlement, for a small company. Few live the way they do. They wander constantly, venture further to the north than most – and occasionally, further to the south, but rarely tread the middle ground, where most free folk reside. Some find such existence unfulfilling, unpleasant – life too lonely, resources too scarce. She, for one, has always favored the cold, the solitude, the vast, undisturbed expanse of snow. The last true expanse of the north, Deshanna is fond of calling it. She is not like Lira; she was born among the free folk of the southern hills, but the older she grew the further north she pulled herself, upward and upward, like climbing a mountain.

The Keeper enjoys the beauty of the land; _the Dales_ , she would say, _are as free as the Dalish. Nay, more so_. Liranen, for her part, has always appreciated the cruelty of it. You do not exist in a place such as this. You survive in it. You live; you are awake; you have no choice in it. You sharpen or you die. She accepts the hardship, the chill. It keeps her anger hot. Rage, she has found, is a fire easy enough to light, but difficult to sustain if it is not constantly fueled. She intends to keep hers burning hot enough to melt away the kneelers’ wretched Wall.

She has looked upon the Wall, the great sheet of ice that cuts the land in two. She has seen it many times, followed it with her eyes until it disappeared on the horizon. She has never climbed it. Deshanna says she may, perhaps, one day, but she does not understand – Lira does not want to scale the monster. She wants to bring it down.

She had a dream once, years ago, when she was younger, after she looked upon the Wall for the first time. She saw the ice crumbling, coming apart – saw the vast, unconquerable mass topple to the ground. She looked upon it from above, larger than any giant, her own two hands great enough to sweep away the immense Wall as though it were nothing more than a castle built of snow. She never told Deshanna, but she has never forgotten. It remains always in her mind, like a promise: someday, she will see the Wall fall. She will have a hand in it. She will tear it down. She knows it, as she has always know it, as she knows that clouds are white and crows are cruel. She would cut the frost.

Perhaps one day, when the land is freed and what was lost restored, they will sing songs about it. About her. She has never met the man the kneelers call King Beyond the Wall, but she has heard he has a certain fondness for songs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured it was about time I actually started posting this. I don't know how often I'll be updating, since my intention is to post the new chapters for all three fics at the same time - which means any given update required writing three chapters, not one - but I have a few written in the buffer for each of the fics and exam season is finishing up over here, so we should be good.  
> A few notes regarding how this series is to be read that I'll put in the notes of all three fics:  
> -The three fics in this series occur simultaneously. They are separated by location: the Seven Kingdoms, Essos, and the land beyond the Wall. Currently, each fic has four narrators who chapters will alternate between.  
> -All three fics (hopefully) will be updated simultaneously and are meant to be read simultaneously. However, I'm endeavoring to write them such in a way that this is not required. You'll probably get the most out of them by reading all three at the same time, but you shouldn't have to read the other two in order to enjoy and understand the events of any given one.  
> -I'm putting archive warnings for violence and character death on all three fics because hey, it's Game of Thrones. People are going to die. It may be that four people die in the fic set beyond the Wall and none die in the Free Cities, but I'm going to put the archive warnings on all three. Just in case.  
> -The prologue work is pure exposition. If you want to be introduced to Leliana's part early and get a sense of the state of the world, you may want to glance at it, but it's not required reading.  
> -I'm working with three of my protags in this fic - Esther Cousland, Maribel Hawke, and Liranen Lavellan. All three are point of view characters in the fics they're part of.


	2. Chapter 2

**MERRILL**

 

* * *

 

 

Merrill sits very, very still with her eyes squeezed closed as the cold tip of Liranen’s finger writes patterns on her cheeks.

“Relax your face,” her disembodied voice advises from the dark. “It’s all scrunched up.”

Merrill obliges; she drops her cheekbones, lifts her eyebrows, purses her mouth for a moment.

“Merrill, stop _moving_.”

“You said to unscrunch my face!”

“I said to relax your face. Relax means stop moving.”

“I don’t think that’s –”

“Merrill, your face moves when you talk.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

She holds as still as she can – statue, Merrill, be like a statue, be like a stone, pretend it’s a game. Liranen’s fingers curve around her temples, smearing the dark paste smoothly underneath her eyes; their pressure lifts from her skin for a moment, reappears on her chin to draw two lines down from her lower lip. She’s beginning to etch squiggling lines down over her chees when Merrill sniffs.

“Merrill!”

“Sorry! Sorry!” If it’s a game, she’s lost.

“Having trouble?” she hears Solas’s voice inquire, accompanied by the sound of the tent’s flap being pulled aside.

Liranen heaves a sigh. “She fidgets like a child.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t move your mouth, Merrill.”

She responds with a muffled sound – an attempt at an apology with her lips firmly pressed together.

“I could take over,” Solas offers.

“I’m better at this than you are,” Liranen replies. “And we wouldn’t want you to have to get your hands dirty. Fetch Neria for me?”

“Why?”

“To help me with mine. She knows which markings I like best.”

“I know which markings you like best.”

“Fetch Neria, Solas.”

Merrill hears a soft sigh, and then the tent rustles again. She almost comments, but remembers just in time that she’s not meant to be talking. Liranen resumes work on the markings, and after a minute, she exhales heavily. “There,” she declares. “You should keep still for a while longer, to let it dry, but you can open your eyes.”

Merrill does, blinking to clear them, and Liranen’s face – harsh and cold and sharp as ice, but pretty – swims into view.

“I think you’ve made Solas sad,” she says.

“You shouldn’t move your mouth,” Liranen replies tiredly.

Merrill pauses a moment, and then repeats, “You’ve made Solas sad,” taking great care to move her mouth as little as possible.

Liranen sighs. “He’ll survive.”

“He’s quite a lovely artist, you know.”

“He doesn’t like touching the face paints,” she replies. “I won’t have him making an exception on my account.”

Merrill starts to smile, but quickly stops herself. “That’s sweet.”

“It’s not.”

“It is.”

“It isn’t, Merrill.”

“But he’s willing,” she points out. “He’s offered. He wants to help. He’s your friend.”

“Yes, he is,” Liranen agrees, rising to her feet. “And not my husband. Keep your face still.”

“Where are you going?”

“Neria.”

“Solas is bringing her,” she reasons. “And it’s warmer in here.”

“I prefer the cold.” Liranen turns, pushes the flap of the tent aside, and leaves.

Merrill stays where she is, keeping still and silent, for as long as she can bear – which, admittedly, isn’t even long enough to let the paint dry completely. She’s careful to make sure she keeps her face still and expressionless, though, as she ducks through the opening of the tent. Quickly, she spots Freema – carefully cutting down feathers for arrows, her face already marked with fine green lines, her white hair swept to the side, her eyes intently focused on her task. Not far off is Neria, kneeling in the snow with a bowl of thick black paint as black as night, as black as raven’s feathers, as black as her subject’s hair, as she puts the last touches on Liranen’s markings. She has darkened one entire half of her face, but for erased streaks of pale skin, negative space mirroring the black lines on the cheek of the unpainted side. The dark half, Merrill notes, is the side with her scars, the large vertical gash and its littler twin. Under the paint, they are but raised lines, nearly invisible. Solas stands a ways off, his face as blank as ever – the paint irritates his skin, he says. Merrill can feel her own crusting on her face as she sidles up to him.

“She looks lovely,” she comments – her eyes, of course, on Liranen.

Solas nods. “Neria’s work does her credit.”

“Not the paint.” She nudges him with her shoulder, giggles lightly. “Her.”

He falters. “She is – striking.”

“Do you love her?”

“Merrill!”

“I’m only asking, don’t get your underclothes in a knot.”

He flushes, takes a steadying breath. “Liranen is… a trusted friend. A valued friend.”

Merrill presses a hand dramatically to her breast. “Ooh, my heart,” she swoons, holding the back of her other hand to her forehead. “Catch me, Solas!”

For a moment, she thinks he won’t, and braces herself to hit the snow hard on her back – but his arm shoots out at the last moment, stopping her fall and tipping her back up onto her feet. “Your opinion is noted,” he says tensely as she chortles, “and appreciated. But I would prefer no one be involved in any matters between myself and Lira but for myself and Lira.”

“Lira,” Merrill echoes, her voice a sing-song simper.

Solas flushes again. “Good day, Merrill,” he says bluntly, turning away and unceremoniously departing, leaving her contentedly giggling to herself.

“Where’s he off to?”

Merrill jumps, spinning around to face Liranen. Her paint is finished, and she has strapped both of her short swords to her belt. The rest of the party will carry bows, as a ranged weapon is far better suited to taking down prey than is the short reach of a blade, but Liranen is not hunting today. She accompanies the party to protect the rest of them.

“Haven’t a clue,” Merrill quips, looking off the way Solas had gone.

Liranen frowns, but offers no further comment. “Fetch your bow,” she instructs. “We’re losing the light.”

“It’s barely past dawn.”

“And I’d like to return before dusk,” she agrees. “Fetch your bow, Merrill.”

Merrill heaves a dramatic sigh, but turns and trudges back toward her tent all the same. She glances back over her shoulder before she enters it; Liranen, alone now, has unsheathed the longer of her two blades and is twirling it in her hand, testing the weight of it. She moves like water, like winter wind, and honestly, Merrill’s heart goes out to Solas. The woman is cold, no doubt – as frigid and immovable as ice – but she is beautiful, eyes turned steely and tightly braided black hair that shimmers almost blue under the sun. And the way she moves, sword in hand, cutting the air… Merrill feels half in love with her herself from time to time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been about two weeks since I posted the first part of this and I think that's the schedule I'm going to try to keep to. So unless the speed at which I'm writing these chapters increases significantly, you can probably expect an update around every two weeks. Probably.  
> Also, one thing I think I neglected to mention: although I may be twisting the canon timeline of ASOIAF a little bit to keep the three fics in sync, we're pretty much starting around midway through A Storm of Swords - or, for you show-watchers, Season 3.


	3. Chapter 3

**ANDERS**

 

* * *

 

“Bloody cold,” the once-maester mutters, pulling his cloak tighter around him.

If he’s honest, he has found no comfort in warmth since first he took the black. Castle Black has hearths aplenty, yes, but it is an old fortress, and drafty, and blanketed in snow even deep in summer. The cloak awarded him as a brother of the Night’s Watch may well be the warmest he has ever owned, but he would trade it and every fire burning in the halls of the Watch’s seat happily to stand once more in the sun and the warm sea breeze of King’s Landing.

 _Your actions, your loyalties, robbed you of that_ , he reminds himself. _With the heat of wildfire, you gave up a life of warmth._ As far from the blaze as he had stood, he can still recall the scorch of it on his face, the heat comparable only to tales of long-lost dragonfire. But in this bitter winter weather, even the memory feels cold.

“Best get used to it,” a somewhat more chipper voice advises, and Anders nearly swears aloud – he had not meant to be overheard, least of all by the only knight in their company. He lifts his head; above him, though not looking at him, Ser Cullen stands facing the wind. In the chill, the very tip of his nose is bright red.

“We’ll find colder weather the further north we go,” Cullen says.

“All respect, Ser,” Thom calls from where he sits, eyes on the block of wood in his hands, “but have you ever _been_ further north than this?”

“Few have,” the knight replies, “but it stands to reason.”

Thom huffs. “Wonder how much further we’d have to go before we reached the sea.”

“We’d run short of maps first,” Anders points out.

“And food, most like.” Thom shivers. “Don’t fancy hunting these parts. Nothing good would live in a place like this.”

“Agreed,” Cullen says grudgingly. He lifts his gaze, glances across the horizon. “Emeric and Howe should have returned by now.”

“Perhaps they were beset by wildlings,” Thom suggests, and his tone implies it is perhaps halfway a jest.

“Come off it.” Anders shifts on the stone he sits on, stretches his hands out to warm them over the pitiful blaze that they’re daring to call a fire. “Even wildlings wouldn’t live in this frozen waste.”

“Eh. You’re probably right.” He looks up from his work. “See, Cullen? Nothing to worry about.”

“There are greater things in these lands to worry about than wildlings.”

Thom returns his attention to the block of wood, and to the patterns he has been carving into it with his knife, and for a short while, Anders watches him. He is an odd one, Thom Rainier. He speaks little of his history unless prompted, but from what Anders has heard, he was sent to the Wall for the crime of impersonating a Kingsguard knight – a short-lived, lesser-known man from the time of Aerys, some fellow called Blackwall, who died in the wretched rebellion and never did anything anyone remembered. A strange tale, but other men at Castle Black have stranger. It’s the whittling that really sets him apart. The man is always carving one thing or another, small trinkets, and sending them off south whenever he can. Anders has heard different stories, rumors passed around the table at dinner by men who have little else to talk about. Some say they’re for his daughter, for example. More suspect they’re for his former lover. Anders himself has wondered, but never bothered to inquire.

Now, however, in this place, and in this cold, and with Ser Cullen pacing anxiously far enough away as to be out of earshot, he really doesn’t have anything better to do than prod at his sworn brother’s privacy.

“Thom,” he says.

“Hmm?” The man does not look up.

“These items you make. Are they for a woman?”

“Is your name really Anders?”

“I’m sorry?”

Now, Thom does look up. “Oh. Sorry. Are we not exchanging invasive questions?”

Anders chuckles. “We can, if you like. We’ll make a game of it. Quickly, before Serah Rutherford comes back.”

Thom huffs a laugh. “Alright. Your name?”

“It isn’t Anders.”

“What is it?”

Anders shakes his head. “You’ve not answered mine yet.”

“Hmph.” Thom bores a small hole in the block with the tip of his knife. “Yes. They’re for a woman.”

“Your wife?”

“Can’t take a wife, remember?”

Anders shrugs. “Plenty had wives before they were sent here.”

Thom lays the flat of his knife against the wood and pushes the edge across the block, filing off a thin layer. “No,” he says, after a long quite. “No, she never was.” He draws a long gulp of icy air, and his breath steams when he exhales; he looks up. “That was two.”

Another shrug.

He huffs again. “Eh. Well. Did you ever have a woman?”

Anders blinks. “You mean – _have_ I ever, or –”

“A wife,” Thom amends. “Or someone close enough to it.”

 _No. No, I had no wife, no woman_ , he thinks. _I had a man, tall and beautiful and cloaked in dragonfire-red, and his name was Justice, and his sword was cold, cruel steel. I told him I would feed his righteous anger, and he starved._ “No,” he says.

“No?” Thom echoes. “Handsome man like yourself?”

Despite himself, Anders chuckles. “My… focus lay elsewhere. I fear any woman would have felt rather neglected.”

“Married to your work, eh?”

“Something like that.” He reaches out to hold his hands over the fire again. “You have another question, if you’d like to ask it.”

Thom shrugs. “Nah. Keep your past in the past. It’s not mine to ask after.” He pauses in his work, staring down for a moment at the start of the carving. “How many rays on the Martell sun?”

Anders pauses, calling up an image of the Dornish house’s sigil in his mind. “Sixteen,” he answers. “Counting the ones behind the ends of the spear. Why?”

“Couldn’t remember.” He brings his face a little closer to the block of wood as he works with renewed focus, and Anders has just resolved to leave him be when the sound of steel makes him whirl around; Ser Cullen is glaring up at the small cliff they’ve camped at the base of, his sword halfway out of its sheath.

“What?” he demands.

Cullen stays as he is for a moment, stiff, before letting some of the tension go out of his body, sliding the sword back into its place. “I thought I heard something,” he says.

Anders shakes his head, moves his hands away from the fire; he finds where he’s tucked his gloves in his cloak and pulls them back on over his pale fingers, his pale palms. “You’re paranoid, ser knight. There aren’t Others lurking in every shadow.”

“You’re sure of that, are you?”

“I’m sure of something.” He tugs at the hem of his glove. “Anyway, if there are Others near, or wildlings, let them come. It would be a welcome change of pace.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is late, but hey, it's the men of the Watch! Anders is fun to write. What a drama queen.


	4. Chapter 4

**LIRANEN**

 

* * *

 

She knows full well that Merrill and Freema are conversing on some inane matter at the back of the hunting party, but to their credit, she cannot hear them. This is neither’s first hurt; they know how to stay quiet enough that prey will not hear. She will stop them if it becomes a problem, but for the moment, they can have their fun.

Liranen leads the party, ever wary, prepared to draw her blades at a moment’s notice. Solas moves behind her, silent as a stone, his bow in hand. Merrill is behind him, plucking leaves off a branch she’d broken from a tree and idly decorating her hair with them; Lira would put an end to it were she not aware, from experience, that the young girl can have an arrow notched and aimed in half the time it takes her to draw a breath. Freema brings up the back of the group, half a head of white hair glinting in the light; her bowstring is loose, but her arrow is notched, and despite the conversation she is having with Merrill, she is – like Lira – vigilant.

There are many things in these lands to fear. Animals, of the sort no one wants to hunt. Other free folk, from time to time – they are far from a united front. Bodies that rise from the ice to walk again.

There is a rustling in a nearby bush; instinctively, Freema draws her bowstring, aims, but Solas raises a hand, and she relaxes. From the underbrush, a gray wolf pads into view, moving deftly across the snow to the man’s side.

“Yours?” Lira questions.

Solas nods, his hand lowering to bury itself in the fur at the back of the beast’s neck. “Something lies south,” he announces.

“Lots o’ things lie south,” Freema quips.

“Is it prey?” Merrill chimes; she tilts her head inquisitively, and a few leaves fall from her hair and flutter down to rest in the snow.

“I am uncertain.” He turns to Liranen. “May I…?”

She nods, gesturing broadly forward. “Lead the way.”

Solas leads them through the snow-blanketed woods, his wolf companion trailing close to his side. They remain quiet out of habit, though their focus has been sufficiently diverted from the hunt. Freema fells a small bird with an arrow all the same when it flies into view, much to Merrill’s dismay. There’s nearly no meat on its bones, but she tucks it into her pack, saying something about making some kind of adornment from the feathers.

They come, eventually, to the top of a small cliff. Lira hears the voices below first; instantly, instinctively, she hits the ground hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. She’s not sure if he heard them as well, or if he is simply following her lead with blind trust, but a bare second late, Solas is on the ground as well. She hears two soft crunches in the snow as Merrill and Freema follow suit.

“What is it?” Merrill whispers.

“Hush, Merrill,” she replies.

“Is there prey?”

“ _Hush._ ”

Lira pulls herself forward on her stomach, creeping up to the edge of the cliff, and she can hear Solas beside her doing the same. Cautiously, silently, she peers over the edge.

A small, flickering campfire burns below, barely more than embers. Beside it, a man with dull blond hair half tied back sits on a rock, warming his hands. A ways off, near a pitiful tent, another man with a dark beard sits on the cold ground, whittling away at a block of wood with a knife. A third man, with golden hair neatly combed and a grand sword at his hip, paces the edge of the campground with long strides.

All three men wear thick black cloaks.

She glances over to Solas to find that he is already looking at her. She will not admit to him that he was right. He knows. And she has far too much pride.

“Crows,” she hisses.

There’s a pause from her party until Merrill pipes up, “The birds? Or…”

“Not birds, Merrill.”

“Oh.” She pauses. “What do we do?”

“Kill them,” comes Freema’s snarled response. “They don’t belong here.”

“There are three of them,” Solas says.

“Four of us,” she counters. “And we have surprise on our side.

“Where they are a bare few men of the Watch, more cannot be far.”

“So we strike quick, before their friends show up.”

“Liranen,” Solas appeals. “We should return to the Keeper. Tell her what we have seen. The decision of how to proceed is rightly hers.”

“That’s a temporary camp, Solas,” Lira points out. “They may have moved on by the time we return.”

“So we attack now,” Freema insists.

“Do we have to kill them?” Merrill questions. “They’re not hurting anyone.”

“Only because they don’t presently see anyone to hurt.” Liranen narrows her eyes down at the camp below – at the man by the fire wrapped tightly in his cloak, at the high and mighty knight with his high and mighty chin up. The cold of the snow eats into her furs, and her anger is as hot as ever.

“Lira,” Solas murmurs beside her. “Please, think –”

He’s cut off abruptly as she clamps a hand over his mouth and pulls him back from the edge with her; the camp disappears from her view just as the knight glances their way. Fuck. A close call. “Quiet,” she hisses as she moves her hand away.

“What are we going to do?” Merrill asks, her voice hushed.

Lira draws a cold breath. “We attack.”

“Lira –”

“Hush, Solas.” She turns her head to look behind her, to face Freema and Merrill. “We attack. Aim to wound and incapacitate. Kill only if you have to. We’ll bring them back to the Keeper.”

Freema gives a curt, assenting nod, and Merrill a small smile.

“Bring them back?” Solas echoes.

“Crows never venture this far north,” she reasons. “She may have questions for them. Keep the golden-haired one alive. He seems to lead them.”

“How can you tell?” Merrill questions.

“I can.” On her stomach, she retreats from the cliff, far enough that she can rise to her feet again; the others follow her lead. “Freema, stay up here,” she instructs. “Merrill and I will find a way down and flank them. When you hear us ambush, put that bow to use.” Her gaze turns to Solas, and she finishes, “Use the wolf.”

Freema displays her agreement by notching an arrow; Merrill by coming to her side, her fingers white around her shortbow; Solas by nodding courteously and going to sit at the base of a large tree. He closes his eyes as she turns away, and no sooner have she and Merrill started their descent than she finds the large grey wolf dogging their steps.

Her blades are in her hands, and it does not take her long to find a way down from the cliff. She keeps her party at a distance as they move around the camp, draws nearer when they are out of sight; at last, they stand behind the cover of the taller of the tents. She meets Merrill’s eyes first, and then the eyes of the wolf, large and glassy with Solas’s intelligence glinting behind them.

She nods, and they attack.

The blond man by the fire is closest to her, so she moves, quick as thought, to catch him from as he stands. He is much taller than her, but she is used to taking down opponents whose size she cannot match; she is behind him with one of her blades at his throat before he can react. She sees his hand inching towards the sword at his hip, and her blade’s twin darts out to slice at his hand before he can grip it. “Leave that where it is,” she hisses, the first blade nearly cutting into the skin of his neck, and then the hilt of the second blade comes down hard on his head, and he slumps unconscious.

Solas and Merrill, she sees, have both concentrated their efforts on the golden-haired knight. She spots the dark-haired man drawing his sword, rushing at them. But before she can intervene herself, arrows begin to sprout from his chest – one, two, three, the flags of their feathers all cut just the way Freema likes them. She spins past him on her way to the knight, just in case, opens a gash across his chest that she does not wait to see blood begin to pour from; she turns away again instead, leaves him to Freema.

There is red in the wolf’s fur, but she does not know whose blood it is. Half of Merrill’s arrows glance off the man’s armor; the other half find their mark, but seem to do little more than slow him. The wolf pounces at him, knocks him to the ground, and Lira closes in, strikes him hard over the head with the pommel of her blade just as she had the first man. As soon as his eyes close, she sheathes her knives, turning quickly to hold Merrill by the shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

Merrill extends her arm, peering wide-eyed at the red gash it wears like a bracelet as though it is a great curiosity to her. “He got me a little bit,” she admits. “M’alright, I think.”

She nods, and hears the wolf whine; it was certainly injured in the fight, then, and as she looks at it she sees no trace of Solas’s control. It is not long after that until Solas himself hurries down the hill to them, going immediately to the wolf’s side. Freema is just behind him, ready with a strip of fabric she’s torn from her furs to bind Merrill’s arm.

“The bearded one is dead, or I’ve truly lost my touch,” she announces as she ties the strip tight. “I can carry the skinny one, if you and Solas can handle the gilded lord.”

Liranen nods her assent. “Merrill, can you travel?”

“M’really alright, Liranen.”

“Good.” She moves to the side of the golden knight, gesturing for Solas to join her, as Freema jogs over to the blonde man. She secures her longbow on her back and hefts him up into her arms, and Liranen kneels beside the knight, pushes back the hair that had fallen into his face. But for the blood beginning to stain his cloak a darker black, he could be sleeping like a babe by the looks of him, and the thought nearly makes her laugh aloud.

“Right, then,” she announces. “We’ll see what the Keeper makes of them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops.
> 
> okay so reviews are the best shit ever. i feel like i should mention that. it's quick, it's easy, it's free: making sure authors feel appreciated for the work they do. it's incredibly encouraging and i'd like to know what you guys like that's happening here so i can do more of that and what you guys don't like that's happening here so i can do less of that.  
> and in unrelated news i'm giving up on trying to pass myself off as a sophisticated intellectual person by using proper capitalization and punctuation in my author's notes. it was bound to happen eventually. anyway. please review. you're the best.


	5. Chapter 5

**CULLEN**

 

* * *

 

He regains consciousness slowly, languidly, and becomes aware first of a coolness on his face.

He notices the pain next, and then the warmth of the air around him. It is no summer day, but he’s out of the cold. He must be back at Castle Black, then; the expedition is be over, and he is back in the warmth and shelter of the fortress’s halls, and the cool touch on his face is a cold cloth as one of his brothers cleans his wounds sustained… his wounds sustained from…

His eyelids feel heavy, impossibly heavy, but he forces his eyes open, blinks hard to clear his vision, and what he sees is not the dark stone of Castle Black, but the near-blinding brightness of sunlight through skins. And the figure above him is not a brother of the Watch, but a woman, small and lithe, a dark outline against the bright background.

He tries to recoil from her touch, tries to scramble away, but the moment he begins to write, she places a small hand on his chest to hold him down. She seems thin to the point of frailty, but either she is much stronger than she looks or he is very, very weak, because once she pins him down he cannot move. “Shhh,” she urges, continuing to gently clean the wound on his face with the cold cloth. “Lie still. You’ll hurt yourself.” Her voice is kind and sweet, a lilting sort of music, and far too thickly accented to belong to any Westerosi woman. His heart sinks. He is, then, beyond a doubt, in the care of wildlings.

He opens his mouth, takes a rasping breath – his throat is dry, his tongue thick in his mouth. “Where?” he croaks.

“Safe,” she replies. “For now.”

The longer he looks at her, the more his eyes adjust to the light, and she is coming into focus. She is young, he thinks – pretty, with fair skin and fine features. Her hair is dark, dark brown and braided down her back; her eyes are a clear, bright green; her face bears odd red markings. War paint, perhaps? The thought chills him.

He tries to summon enough saliva to swallow. “Why –”

“The Keeper says you’re not to come to harm,” the wildling woman – no, girl seems a more accurate descriptor – replies. “Well, that is to say – you’ve already come to harm, but you’re not to come to more. I’m told to clean your wounds and keep a –” She falters. “Keep you safe.”

Keep a watch on him, he expects she was going to say. Well, that, at the very least, is expected. Safe as he may be, he is a prisoner.

In an odd way, that puts him at ease.

“I’m Merrill,” the girl says, out of nowhere. “That is, I – my name. It’s Merrill. What’s yours?”

He offers no response.

“You don’t have to tell me your real name if you don’t want to,” she continues. “Just something to call you by. Or –”

“Cullen,” he interrupts, and she stops in mid-word.

“Cullen,” she repeats. “That’s your name?”

He manages a weak nod.

“Is that a common name? Where you’re from?” He gives her an odd look, and she shrugs. “Only making conversation.”

He sucks in another rattling breath. “…why?”

“I don’t know,” she says with another shrug. “Long as I’m here, and you’re awake… I don’t know. Seems like we could talk a little. No harm in it.”

“No,” he says. No, that isn’t what he was asking. “Not –” He’s cut off by violent, hacking coughs. “Why –” Mother’s mercy, he can barely get one word out, his throat is as dry as the Dornish sands –

“Here.” The cool touch of the cloth on his face is gone, and then there’s something being lifted to his lips. Instinctively, he grabs the wildling’s wrist, holds her back from tipping the contents into his mouth, and she gives a surprised squeak. The tone of the sound, the look in her widened eyes… that is when it occurs to him. Here he is, lying helpless on his back, wounded, powerless, weaponless… and she is afraid. He is at her mercy, and the savage girl is afraid of him.

No sooner has he thought it than the flap of the tent is pulled open and a figure barges inside in a rush of freezing air. “It’s only water!” Merrill is exclaiming, incredulous in her fear, and then there is a blade at his throat, cold and hard, biting into his skin.

“Remove your hand from her,” the newcomer hisses, “or I will remove your hand.”

He releases his hold on Merrill, and she recoils from him as soon as she is freed, pressing herself into a corner of the tent. The pressure of the blade against the skin of his neck remains.

“Merrill,” the new wildling says, her eyes fixed on him – her eyes, yes, hers, she came in with such speed that he could not make out her figure, but her voice is certainly that of a woman. “Leave. I will handle this from here.”

“But the Keeper said –”

“I know what the Keeper said.” She turns now, looking over at the shaken girl. “The hunt is over,” she says. “Go and clean your face. Freema can help you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Go, Merrill.”

The girl nods quickly and scampers from the tent, and as the new woman turns her focus back to Cullen, Cullen turns his to her. She is older than Merrill, harsher, with blue eyes like ice, like steel, like winter’s bite. Her hair is the purest black – obsidian black, raven-feather black, and knotted intricately back. She, like Merrill, has a painted face, but her markings are a far cry from the smaller girl’s – one half of her face is almost entirely obscured in black, a few rare lines of pale skin shining through the only signs of light in the shadow. She is, from one look at her, every bit as wild and barbaric as he would expect all of her people to be.

“If you ever lay a hand on her again, crow,” she spits, “I will not stop to ask you nicely.”

She takes the knife from his neck, and he coughs. “I did not mean to frighten her,” he gets out.

“She was frightened from the start,” the wildling snaps. “You terrified her.”

“I’m sorry,” he croaks. “I didn’t think –”

“Didn’t think we’d raise our children to fear you as much as you raise yours to fear us?”

“No – that’s not –” But it is, it is – it isn’t what he’d meant to say, but it’s surely what was going through his mind.

The wildling shakes her head. “You sit in your stone houses,” she mutters, “and you think you understand.”

He doesn’t know how to respond. For a moment she busies herself with pushing the cap back into the mouth of the canteen of water. He tries to sit up, and he’d thought that she wasn’t looking, but her hand catches his chest and holds him back.

“Stay down,” she advises, without turning her head to him. “You are injured, and the Keeper wants you alive. Do not give me an excuse.”

“Keeper,” he echoes. “Is that your leader? He rules you?”

“She guides us,” the wildling corrects harshly. “We rule ourselves.”

Of course. Free folk, that’s what they call themselves. They are as known for their refusal to bow as they are for their bloodthirstiness. As he watches her, she settles on the ground beside him, pulls a stone from her pocket and idly sets about sharpening her knife. An intimidation technique? Or perhaps it’s simply dull. Either way, she is intimidating enough on her own.

“Where are my men?” he asks. “The two I was with.”

She strikes the stone down the length of the blade. “If I say that they are dead, what will you do?”

“That depends,” he replies. “Are you lying?”

She pauses in her work, presses her lips into a hard line, but does not lift her head to face him. “Yes,” she says, resuming her task, “and no.”

“What does that mean?”

“One is dead. The other lives.”

The air feels thicker in his throat. His men, his brothers, their lives entrusted to his care – he has failed one of them. He almost does not dare to ask, but is not knowing truly better? “Which one?”

“The bearded man.”

Thom Rainier. Cullen tries to recall if he had any family before he took the black that ought to be informed, but cannot. What would it matter, anyway? He certainly isn’t in any position to send a raven south. “Did you kill him?” he asks.

“Does it matter?” she returns.

“It matters to me.”

She strikes the rock against the knife again, and does not give him an answer. He resolves himself to press the matter, but before he can, she speaks. “Don’t worry your head over him, crow,” she says. “We burned him. He won’t be coming back.”

The words send a chill through him, and he remembers, then – not that he had forgotten, but it was not at the front of his mind – why the Watch ventured north in the first place.

“And the other?” he asks.

She shrugs. “Better off than you. He went down easy. He’s under guard.”

“Is that the truth?” He hesitates a moment. “Is any of this the truth?”

Now, at last, she lifts her eyes from her knife to him. “What reason would I have to lie?”

“You don’t trust the Watch.”

“Aye, I don’t,” she assents. “With good damned reason. But lying’s only any use if the person you’re lying to has at least a little bit of power.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “You…”

As he glances down at himself – unarmed, barely strong enough to push himself upright, under guard, in the center of a wildling encampment, the Seven only know how many blasted miles from the Wall, from Westeros, from something akin to safety – he cannot deny that she makes a fair point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "you sit in your stone houses and you think you understand" translates approximately to "you know nothing, cullen rutherford."


End file.
